The Path to Lasting Fulfillment

At some point in all of our lives, we are going to have to answer this formidable question.  Who are you living for? Are you living for your mother, your father, your friends, or yourself? Are you judging what you do as good or bad based on what your parents or peers think of you or are you being true to yourself? In order to live a life that is true to your deepest values, you first must determine what your deepest values are in the first place. As a society, we are living very confused lives.  We have no idea what we want.  We think we know what we want, yet that elusive sense of pure joy and fulfillment persistently seems to elude us.  We derive feelings of happiness when things go great and compliments abound us, and we question ourselves when feedback from the outside is less than optimal or even worse, down right negative.  We feel great when people tell us how wonderful and attractive we are, and we tend to respond in one of two ways when people challenge or attack our character or we are as individuals.  We usually either respond with anger or resentment or we write them and their feedback off all together.  Neither is beneficial for our spiritual, physical, and emotional evolution.

I have been on a major quest for these last 6 years.  I have been on a quest to determine my deepest core values and live a life congruently with those values every single day.  My quest has involved absolving any feelings of doubt, insecurity, and unworthiness based on what other people think of me.  It is none of my business what people think of me anyway.  This quest has seen its fair share of ups and downs, but among that has been a tremendous amount of growth.  I remember a time when I took everything that people thought of me personally.  I would look for approval at every turn.  I would gain my sense of self-esteem based on certain outcomes and what people thought about me.  It's a tough trap we fall into because one of our basic human needs is the desire for love and connection, but love and connection does not come from dependency.  Love and connection comes from being a person who radiates love and connection from within.  We find in ourselves that which we too often seek from the outside.  We must become so in love and connected with ourselves that our self esteem is impenetrable from the outside.  Our outside world will always be a reflection of our inside world.  If we find ourselves being influenced by the thoughts, words, and deeds from those around us, we must look within to strengthen our conviction in our values and who we live our lives for.  Are you living your life for your spouse, your friend, or your family or do you live your life for yourself?  I know living your life for yourself sounds like a very negative and selfish way to live, however, if you truly want to experience joy and fulfillment, it is the only way to live.  You can't possibly give away what you don't already possess.  If you don't possess love in your heart, you can't possibly offer it to someone else.  If you don't possess gratitude for who you are as an individual, you will have nothing to share.  You see, I live my life very differently than most people and for the longest time, I thought there was something wrong with me.  The problem was I was asking myself all the wrong questions.  You'll find the quality of your life is determined by the quality of the questions you ask.  I was asking myself, why can't I be like everyone else around me? What could I have done differently for the other person to accept me or love me? These are not the questions we need to be asking ourselves.  These questions are unstable and detrimental.  At best, positive answers provide a temporary crutch to ignore the work that we really need to do in our lives.  At worst, these answers provide a rickety foundation that is sure to crumble down around us at some point.  We need to be asking must different questions.  We need to be asking questions like, am I living congruently with my deepest values and do I even know what my values are? Is what I am saying or doing in line with the highest vision of my character and moral standard? Are my intentions pure and unsullied? The only way to life long lasting fulfillment is to first become on the inside what we seek on the outside.  We must become a fortress of love and gratitude.  We must train ourselves to listen to our voice from within and filter all of the noise from the outside.  We must only use feedback from the outside as a tool to refine and grow our values and convictions from within. They must never be used to define us. 

How can you tell when you are on the right path? The answer is very simple.  When the noise on the inside becomes so loud, you can't possibly hear the noise on the outside.  When you become emotionally immune to the positive or negative feedback from others.  When you begin to become grateful for all that is placed on your path, because it the only way for you to chart and refine your course.  When you derive an intense sense of peace and serenity from what was once chaos and confusion.  When you begin to see the order in what was once the disorder.  When you see the love and the lesson in what once brought about a pity party.  When you begin to find joy in the silence of a smile, and when you begin to listen to the tune of the sound of your heart, you know you're on the right path.  

I'll see you there.

Love,

Matt

Taking a step toward mastery...

Life has a funny way of testing us and balancing us every chance it gets.  When we get a little high on our pride and achievements, we are provided with a situation or circumstance to bring us back to reality.  When we feel down and out and things seem to be a struggle, we are provided with equal opportunities to realize and actualize our intrinsic greatness.  You see, we are all born with this innate power and greatness that resides in every single one of us always looking to express itself.  This greatness is not just represented as confidence, strength, tenacity, power, joy, laughter, and success.  This greatness is also represented as humility, authenticity, vulnerability, warmth, and caring.  We are two-sided beings.  We are human.  We experience faith as well as fear, confidence as well as worry, power as well as weakness, times of motivation and times laziness and complacency, times when we feel as if we can take over the world and other times when we feel as if the world is closing in around us, and moments when we feel kind and others when we want to throw something through a window.  The unsettling fact in all of our lives is we are going to be confronted with challenges. Some will be minor and insignificant in their magnitude and others will be magnanimous and seemingly insurmountable.  The beauty lies in being able to see the gift in every challenge; to see the light beyond the clouds; to see the order among the chaos.  

I'll let you in on a little secret.  The master is not one who lives a life of perfection and only experiences feelings of joy, love, and prosperity.  The master is the one who, in times of turmoil and adversity, can immediately acknowledge her inner wisdom and at that moment, be able to experience a sincere feeling of gratitude for everything; the good and the bad; the pretty and the ugly; the stuff that feels good and the stuff that is physically and emotionally painful.  Our character and true nature is not revealed in times of ease and comfort but in times of challenge and fear.  It is these times which we need to open our heart to love and gratitude.  It is during times when we feel hardened that the greatest growth and joy comes from opening our hearts to our loving nature; to serve the people around us with warmth, caring, and empathy. When we silence ourselves to the noise around us and take a few deep breathes, we can begin to look around and see all the beauty that surrounds us.  When we get out of our head and into our heart, we begin to appreciate the laughter of a child, the smile of an elderly person, the passion in a piece of music,the peace in the silence between our thoughts, and the love that is all around us.  Every situation is an opportunity for us to make a choice as to how we are going to express our true nature.  Sometimes we get it perfect and other times we fail and get the opportunity to try again.  

In the grand picture of this universe, we are but a spec among specs.  We are an atom among an infinite number of atoms.  We can live our lives believing we are insignificant or we can understand a universal truth that nothing in life happens in isolation.  Just as a change in one cell in our body can affect the events and expression of a trillion other cells in our body, so can our thoughts, words, and deeds create a ripple effect to alter the course of humanity. You can choose to ignore this truth and go on living as though you are an isolated particle on a path of your own or realize you not only have an impact on yourself but an opportunity to shape the path of humanity.  When we start to see the divine presence in all that we do and experience, we begin to shed the layers of darkness around us and express the ultimate nature of ourselves which is one of light and love. As the great artist Michaelangelo once said about how he made his magnificent statue of David, "It is easy. You just chip away the stone that doesn't look like David. I saw an angel in the block of marble and I just chiseled 'til I set him free."  We all have a masterpiece that resides inside of us.  What is yours going to be?

Love,

Matt

Creating miracles in your life...

Would you like to get to a place in your life where you were free from the regrets of your past and the fear of the future? Would you like to get to a place where there was nothing but "the here and now;" where each moment was a gift; where there was nothing to worry about and nothing to fear because when you are in the timeless space of now, there can exist no fear or worry; where you are grateful for all that is, exactly as it is; where you literally feel the miracle of life expanding in your body with every breath you take; where colors are brighter, your body is lighter, and energy is limitless; where you create instant connections with people and you feel like you are surrounded and engulfed by love; where you are still going about your day but it seems like everything around you is moving in slow motion? 

All this may seem like a dream to you, but I promise you it is very much a reality that is within your reach.  I guarantee that you achieve these states on a daily basis, even if it is only for a fleeting moment that you aren't even aware of.  This state is what is referred to as a flow state, a state of complete presence, or being in the now.  Let me give you an example.  I used to play baseball growing up, and very few would argue that hitting a baseball is one of the most challenging things to do in any sport. Actually, there was a study done that determined it is mathematically impossible for a person to hit a baseball coming in at 90 mph from 60 feet away, which is a feat every college, professional, and many high school baseball players on the planet are able to do.  They calculated that at the speed the ball is traveling along with the time it takes for the brain to process the information and translate that into a swing of the bat, it should be literally a mathematical and scientific impossibility to hit a baseball.  This doesn't even take into consideration the coordination and precision it takes to hit a tiny ball with a narrow stick while the ball is moving on different places and trajectories.  It is a scientific mystery that is nothing short of a miracle yet people do it with consistency and regularity on a daily basis.  This wouldn't be possible without the batter being in a state of complete presence and nowness.  I remember when I was a baseball player and I would enter these states of complete presence and consciousness.  It was literally as if time was slowing down. It is a place of consciousness that is unexplainable, yet undeniable. You may not have ever had this experience as a baseball player, but I can guarantee you have had this experience in other areas of your life.  Maybe you are a martial artist, a golfer, or a runner? Think of a time when you were sparring with someone, hitting a perfect golf shot, or seemed to be able to run forever. Maybe you're not an athlete, but there was a time when you were reading a book, looking into the eyes of a lover, or playing with a child, and the world seemed to disappear around you.  Think of someone you have interacted with, a spouse, a friend, or a colleague, and you had the feeling that a 10 ton tractor trailer could crash through the room and come within inches of hitting you, and neither you nor the person you were with would even flinch.  

These are the moments I am talking about! These are the moments of pure consciousness, flow, and nowness!  These the are the moments that are the fuel of our very existence as human beings! Now, we know we all have these moments but they may be very rare and unpredictable. They may occur in our life without us even being aware of it or they may even appear as a slight discomfort or annoyance because it differs from our normal life of disconnectedness.  The million dollar question is how do we create these moments in our life whenever we want? How do we make this the norm rather than the exception? How do we bring a level of intention, gratitude, love, and connection to everything we do from taking out the garbage and doing the dishes to performing at our job to connecting with the people in our life who are all around us? It comes down to one little dirty word.... PRACTICE! 

This level of living is very rare to find because very few people are willing to put in the work it takes to create this kind of a life.  This type of a life is not for the weak willed or weak at heart. This type of life is available for anyone who is willing to put in the work, time, and commitment to making this a reality.  As Wayne Dyer says, "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." Living a life of possibility as opposed to a life of probability is within reach if you are willing to commit yourself to a life of excellence.  If you have read this far, you are already in the upper echelon of people who want something greater for your life.  The way you make it a reality is through action and an unrelenting commitment to that action.  Don't settle for anything less than an extraordinary life because you deserve it.  Now get out there and make it happen.

Love,

Matt